


Safe Distance

by Likeit_Dontstop



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ, SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:55:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25642402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Likeit_Dontstop/pseuds/Likeit_Dontstop
Summary: Changmin picks Minho up at his discharge from military service, three versions: the bad end, the good end, and the true end.
Relationships: Choi Minho/Shim Changmin
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Safe Distance

**Author's Note:**

> *Warning: Closeted character(s); allusion to Jonghyun’s death, to other pairings, to open relationship, to TVXQ’s split in 09; a bit angsty, a bit sad, a bit dramatic.

-Bad End-

Things have not been going well for a while. And if he is honest with himself, all the signs were there since the very beginning. But Minho was young and passionate and offered his affection without reserve and he was too broken to say no. 

When they first had sex, Minho had asked him what they were. What they were was two young men floundering around looking for shelter in a world where no such place existed. He did not have the heart to say that. So he said, instead, that they were friends who watched soccer games together with drinks, and saw the stars in Minho’s eyes dim. 

Guilt led him to give his home key to his hoobae the next morning, as a peace offering, as a tacit plea to turn the page and to ‘just live in the moment’. Minho took it as something else. Minho, too precious for his own good, thought it was an apology. 

Over the decade they have had the same conversation a few more times, usually at Minho’s prompting, once because Jonghyun was tired of their bullshit and demanded that Changmin treat his dongsaeng better. They knew of each other’s side affairs: he slept with a string of women all of which had pretty almond eyes and bad tattoos, and Minho dated two back dancers on and off for three years. Exclusivity was not part of the equation and they knew it: in this industry one must learn to trade pieces of themselves; the heart is no exception. But they also knew that they were special to each other. Changmin had not let another soul step inside his bedroom and Minho, at the worst moment in his life, came to no one but his hyung for comfort: they spent the Christmas of 2017 together, drunk, pouring offerings to a lost soul braver than themselves, for which crime he was crushed by the world.

So Changmin did not -- he does _now_ but he did not at the time -- understand why Minho wanted an answer and what sort of answer he wanted. Twas the night before Minho’s enlistment, and with what little time they had left, delights of the flesh were forsaken for a flat conversation repeated too many times. Minho had not confronted him in many months, and he was taken aback, nay, even a bit annoyed, by the surprise. He acknowledged that Jonghyun had been right that he treated Minho poorly: his dongsaeng loved him first and loved him more, a lot more. But Changmin had control over neither fact. He had been a bad lover only because Minho gave away too much. What he gave Minho was meagre, but all that a poor man could afford.

So he said as much. Minho, no longer the simplistic, bright-eyed 19-year-old, took it in stride and still allowed his rude hyung to see him off the next day. It should have been clear then that they were at the beginning of the end. But Changmin was willfully ignorant. And he was good at it.

And so Minho enlisted. Went away and left a human shaped void in his life. Of course they still met up during Minho’s vacation. But the days were few and far between. And his dongsaeng was always tired. What from -- he dared not to ask, fearing that it was not the training that strained Minho, but the prospect of having to see Changmin on the days off. He could tell that they were growing apart and hoped that it was temporary, and that it would change once Minho was discharged. Selfish as it may sound, he did not want more with Minho, but not less either.

Now, this very instant, as they look into each other after performing, for the dozen cameras around, a brotherly hug rehearsed for the millionth times, he can tell that his hopes are false. He can finally see that the distance is not an illusion, nor an interim. It is Choi Minho putting his guard up. And it was unfamiliar to him because that guard had never existed for him even in the beginning, when an overgrown 17-year-old trainee ran into Dong Bang Shin Ki’s maknae in the hallway and broke into the most blinding smile the latter had ever seen.

That 17-year-old has grown beautifully into a man of strength, integrity, and compassion, who now looks back at him with pity and understanding in his eyes. 

_Even now._ Changmin thinks. _Even now._

It has taken him too long to come to the realization. All the clues were there. He was just too much of a coward to put it together. Being so afraid that his own heart might be broken again, he ended up breaking Minho’s. For a good part of ten years he has been breaking, wrecking, destroying Choi Minho until there is nothing left to salvage, and it takes losing the young man’s love of him for him to see that. 

_Alas, too late._

Would he have done anything differently, he does not know. Amidst the clicking of camera shutters, journalists fighting each other for the next question, fangirl chants, and mics exchanging hands, he has no room to think. So he takes hold of Minho’s extended hand, and tells himself:

_Smile. Smile for the camera, smile for the crowd._

  
  
  


-Good End-

He receives a call from Taemin the day his [GQ interview](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKou1RdkhMg&t=50s) comes out, informing him that Minho saw it and is not happy. _But why?_ He asks. _Because!_ Taemin sounds exasperated, then confused, and finally asks with caution, ‘You said that you were friends who watched soccer and shared drinks together. To a question about why and when you miss Minho-hyung the most. Hyung, surely you are not _just_ drinking buddies?’

_Well, we are also that_. Changmin thinks to himself. _And it’s not like I could give all the salacious details of our bedroom habits to GQ à la_ _a come-out special._ But he supposes he does see Taemin’s point. And that’s what he tells Minho on their next video call. 

These days, their relationship, _their non-relationship_ , is a precarious mess. It gives off the impression of a glass menagerie: firm and beautiful to the unassuming eye, prone to violent shattering if you know just where to push. 

And oh push does Minho. 

‘So what are we then?’ He asks. Wherever he is stationed (‘It’s confidential’)must be far away from civilization. The connection is terrible and they lose it every couple minutes. Frequent interference makes it so that Minho’s already carefully neutral face gets further reduced to inanimate pixels, and his voice muffled by layers of static noise.

Ah, yes, the million dollar question. When Minho first kissed him, touched him, and allowed Changmin to hold him and take him, he had asked the same question, albeit with far less tact. It surprised Changmin then that Minho had even wanted him, a fugitive fleeing both the past and future, carrying the baggage of abandonment and the prospect of a dead career. Minho, in contrast, had been on the rise, a bright new star onward to take the world. 

Hence, it has been speculated, by close friends, that Changmin’s reluctance to commit is a result of jealousy and bitterness held over from 2010, when his life was marked by a constant sense of impending doom. It’s a shit theory, but Changmin goes along with it, because the truth is worse: 

He was never jealous. Rather, what plagued and plagues him to this day are feelings of shame and guilt. Shame, because Choi Minho loves him, has put him on a pedestal and worshipped him like a god -- which he deserves not. Guilt, because he let it happen. He has been feeding on that devotion and aliveness like a leech, held onto it as a reassurance of his worth, survived and thrived owing to it. The truth is, he does not love Minho, not in the way Minho loves him. But he needs Minho, in an inexplicably raw and elemental way, much like a false god in need of its devotee to maintain its facade of divinity and power to enchant. 

He resents himself for bringing upon his friend such misfortune, but ultimately has never had the strength to effect any change. 

Today is different. The physical distance, the static noise, and the grainy image act as a veil between them, and lends him a sort of miraculous courage for overdue confessions.

‘We have been together for ten years.’ He starts, avoiding Minho’s eyes. ‘During which I have not...been the best lover or friend.’

Minho hasn’t moved, hasn’t even batted an eye.

Nerves get the best of him. ‘Because I don’t love you,’ Changmin bursts, at a loss, suddenly finding it hard to continue. 

Minho sighs.

‘Hyung, that’s not true.’

_What?_ Changmin thinks dumbly. He isn’t sure if he is voicing it too. This is not the response he was anticipating. _Did Minho roll his eyes too? What a brat --_

‘I know you think that,’ Minho continues, ‘probably because you think too much of it, probably because you have some strange complex about love being holy and set the bar way too high, or maybe cause you think I am blind to all your shortcomings and am too infatuated with you for you to reciprocate.’

Minho pauses, then asserts with composure, 

‘I _am_...infatuated, probably. But I know when you are being a dickhead. I know you have been unfair, and I don’t, for a lack of better word, believe you are a rising God from the East. Not any more. I just adore you very much and accept those things for what they are, as part of you.

‘I press you to define us not…,’ he pauses to find the right word, ‘not because I need an answer. Well, maybe I do, but that’s not the only reason. I also want you to understand that _this_ , whatever you choose to call _this_ , is good. Is enough. Is what I want too. And it does not depend on what you choose to call _this_.

‘I want you to be gentler on yourself.’ He says, finally.

Changmin is dumbfounded.

A long while later, he mutters, ‘You’ve rehearsed it, haven’t ya?’

Minho smiles, ‘oh hyung, of course, hyung.’

‘Got an answer for me now?’ as he gets pulled into his dongsaeng's arms, he hears him asking, eyes gleaming, voice thick with humor.

So he hugs Minho back with equal strength, buries his head further into the nook of Minho’s neck, reserving a private space amidst hundreds of onlookers. _It's okay._ He thinks. _It will be alright._ and nods, ‘welcome home.’

-True End-

Changmin does not go. What he does do is spending hours crafting a letter, sealing it inside a white envelope together with the invite card, and entrusting it to a reluctant Lee Taemin for delivery. He sits himself in front of the French windows in his living room, watches the cityscape of Seoul sinking gently into the dark night as he himself sinks into the bottle of Malbec. Finally, his cell phone lights up -- _he has deleted the contact per requests, but the eleven digits haven't been as easily removed from his memory. Call it self-deception if you will, but the world has placed stakes in the private truth of one man and so has become complicit in his crime_ \-- the reply is terse, his damnation eternal:

‘You will not have my blessing.’

**Author's Note:**

> *The bad end, good end, and true end trope is (at least initially) a sim game mechanism, where different decisions during gameplay lead to different plot lines and eventually different ends, in the fashion of parallel universes, if you will. 
> 
> *Comments are love :)


End file.
